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Mr. Salmond: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right; the hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) is not here. In fairness, I do not think that he has ever condoned the actions of Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Mackay: It is entirely up to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) whether he protects the hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvin. I would not withdraw a word of what I have just said about him.
Mr. Salmond: Why not wait until he is here?
Mr. Mackay: I would have to wait a very long time indeed. With the greatest respect, I do not think that that is a practical option.
Mr. Bercow: Not if my right hon. Friend is to keep within the eight-minute limit, anyway.
Let me return to the serious issue of whether we should have gone to war. I said at the time that it was a very close call. Many of us had serious reservations about doing so to achieve regime change alone. We also noted carefully that Ministers continued to say that in no circumstances would they go to war to achieve regime change. No matter how much I wanted the regime in Iraq to change, if we go to war for that reason alone, where do we stop?
Like many hon. Members, I passionately believe that there should be regime change in Zimbabwe. I equally believe that the world would be a much safer place if there were regime change in North Korea. Like all right hon. and hon. Members, I am following events in Sudan very closely, and I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that regime change would help to avoid a catastrophe in that country. But does that mean that we should go to war every time we passionately believe that it would be in the interests of other people to have regime change? I would need to think long and hard and often before being persuaded of that. Of course, the Prime Minister did not even try to persuade me of that in the debate on 18 March last year.
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A second, and much more honourable, reason was put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), which was that the American alliance is hugely important to this country. I believe that my generation has lived in peace because of that alliance, I value it hugely, and I would not wish to undermine it. But I point out to my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks, the Prime Minister and others that when one is a good and close friend, one occasionally says no, and one occasionally says, "You have it wrong." Previous Prime Ministers, both Labour and Conservative, have said that to Presidents to whom they were very close. That was not a sufficient reason alone for going to war.
Mr. Bercow: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Mackay: No, because I have taken two interventions and I will lose my time if I do so. I have spotted that.
Another reason given was the link with terrorism. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) who spoke immediately before me, have mentioned that 11 September inevitably traumatised our American friends and allies, and perhaps even unduly influenced the American Administration. What I found reprehensible at the time was Ministers saying that there was a direct link between terrorism—[Interruption.] Let me say this before the Minister for Trade and Investment, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), leaves the Chamber, as I am referring to him. Again and again, I and other Members asked him at Foreign Office questions what links there were, and what proof there was of any links whatever between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. He responded—uncharacteristically petulantly—by asking how I could second-guess our intelligence services, and effectively told me to go away as my point was of no value. Neither he nor any other Member now believes that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda. In fact, al-Qaeda only arrived in Iraq—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. The right hon. Gentleman's time is up.
5.26 pm
Mrs. Helen Liddell (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab): Members have done a lot of rewriting of history this afternoon, and none more so than the Leader of the Opposition. Regrettably, he is not in his place. Leadership is about courage, conscience and consistency. What we saw from him this afternoon was opportunism driven by panic. We saw him denying the judgment of his two predecessors, one of whom spoke most eloquently, and we saw him insult the intelligence of the British people.
Four months ago, virtually to the day, the same right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
"What would have been the consequences if we had waited until a direct threat was real and imminent until we acted? Would we have been in a position, militarily as well as politically and diplomatically, to counter it? How could we take the risk that we would find ourselves impotent? The war against Iraq was
- necessary. It was just. It was, indeed, arguably overdue. And, let us not forget, it was overwhelmingly successful—a judgment which subsequent difficulties do not change."
That is what the leader of the Conservative party said on 19 March to the News Corporation conference in Cancun. That is not the mark of a leader, a statesman or a politician whom we can take seriously.
I make the point about others having taken the opportunity to rewrite history, and I refer the House to the motion that we debated prior to going to war. It was not about intelligence. It was about the breach of United Nations resolutions. It stated that the House
"notes that in the 130 days since Resolution 1441 was adopted Iraq has not co-operated actively, unconditionally and immediately with the weapons inspectors, and has rejected the final opportunity to comply and is in further material breach of its obligations under successive mandatory UN Security Council Resolutions".
The debate that night was about the breach of UN resolutions, which had been going on for 12 years. It was about the intent that Saddam Hussein was known to have, as has been proved in the Butler report, to acquire further weapons of mass destruction, and it was about his history.
Tony Baldry: Is there not a flaw in the right hon. Lady's argument? The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, quite honourably and quite rightly, tried to secure a second resolution from the United Nations. When that failed, they simply sought to return to a previous resolution and say that there had been breaches of it, and to use that as a justification for war. One of the lessons that we must learn from this whole exercise is that we ignore the authority of the United Nations at our peril.
Mrs. Liddell: I reject the first part of what the hon. Gentleman has said. Resolution 1441 was, in itself, clear and unambiguous in the responsibilities that it placed on Saddam Hussein. I wholeheartedly agree with the second part, however. I believe that those who oppose the action taken in relation to Iraq must answer for what the consequences would have been for the United Nations had we yet again allowed Saddam Hussein to prevaricate. The Prime Minister, with the Foreign Secretary, came very close to securing that further resolution—I think it was the 18th, not the second. Another Government said that regardless of what was in that resolution, if there was a deadline they would not support it. Hence there was no chance of proceeding with the resolution.
It is clear and incontrovertible that Saddam Hussein was in breach of the United Nations resolution. In January and again in March, in the famous 173-page document, Dr. Hans Blix set out all that would be required of Saddam Hussein were he to comply. The international community united in resolution 1441—on the basis of broadly similar intelligence throughout the world—in saying that Saddam Hussein was in breach of resolutions, and was known to be seeking to develop his weapons of mass destruction even further.
As Lord Butler has said, it would be a rash person indeed who would conclude that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I must admit that for me there is a question mark over what happened between the carrying of resolution 1441 and the action that took
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place the following March. What actually happened on the ground? In that connection, intelligence would be important. Much has been done to decry our intelligence services this afternoon, but they do an extremely difficult job in very dangerous circumstances. Those who did obtain intelligence—and it should be remembered that not all of it has been discredited—could have paid for it with their lives.
The reality is that the decisions made by the Government and the House in relation to the situation in Iraq were based on a breach of UN resolutions. At that time, we also debated intention. The Butler report makes clearer than even I had understood—and I was in the Cabinet at the time—the extent of Saddam Hussein's intention further to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of us discounted the whole issue of nuclear weapons because of an allegedly forged document that had originally come from a journalist. That issue went off the boil.
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